This morning I have been reading the first issue of a new newspaper entitled ‘As It Is To-Day. Issue 1. London Special’ put together by Chris Heathcote and printed by Newspaper Club. It is a fine collection of old text and advertisements that concern city life in London a long time ago. These texts where first published between 1790 and 1925 and includes a guide to walking in London streets from 1790, a thorough introduction to railway travel from 1839, reports from 1890 opening of the largest electric-lighting supply-station in the world and many more. Heathcote’s carefully selected collection of text give glimpse of a rich history of city-guide literature and opinionated text about travel, leisure, news and experiencing the city. ‘As It Is To-Day’ might well be read in the context of contemporary city use and urban culture and be seen as an interesting supplement to research and theories about encountering the city. The richness of the descriptions of urban experience and the colorful advice from the old city guides could serve a interesting startingpoint for discussing current mainstream location based services (that often seem to limit their ambitions to bland utilities and pointing you towards the ‘nearest-pizza‘.)

‘As It Is To-Day’ also reminds me of research and art events such as this year’s ‘Urban Encounters: Routes and Transitions‘ symposium at Tate Britain about “how photographic practices and archives intersect with an understanding of local and global routes as “places”, considering the temporality of place and the cross-cultural juxtaposition of locales”. The texts presented in ‘As It Is To-Day’ also relates to routes, transitions and the temporality of place, but give a very different feel and experience than what can be achieved by en art gallery. There is obviously a great potential in the bench- and stroll-friendliness of the printed newspaper and I really wish I could read some of these texts in the places they describe. However I’m reading this newpaper at my suburban kitchen table by a cold Norwegian fjord and are limited to a form of kitchenchair travel through time and space. So, many thanks to Chris for a urban tardis for food, walking, fishing suits and railway travel (and I look forward to the next one).

1. For the last year I have been teaching interactiondesign at AHO and worked for the design/research project Touch. This is brilliant and I will be working for Touch until September.

2. Last year I also got my PhD proposal accepted at AHO. I will start working fulltime on this project in Semptember. The PhD’s workingtitle is ‘Inhabiting Urban Computing’. I will write much more about this in the near future.

This diploma project is an expedition into urban computing, an emerging multi-disciplinary research field that focuses on computing and digital networks in urban contexts and on the cultural and social impact this has on the city. The ‘Adventures in Urban Computing’ is a study of how mobile technology devices can be used as instruments for participatory urban studies. It develops and tests experimental devices that raise urban awareness over time and can facilitate informed discussion.

The project is situated between urbanism and interaction design and works specifically with designing mobile technology devices with the purpose of provoking and gathering opinions about everyday life in cities and towns.

Framework
The first half of the project is a theoretical approach to the field where urban computing is placed, traced and discussed within a framework of current writings on ubiquitous computing, urban studies, technology and design. The framework is made up of critical perspectives from the contemporary urban computing discourse and including among others Anne Galloway, Paul Dourish, Genevieve Bell, Adam Greenfield and Stephen Graham. The central conclusions are these:

• Urban computing research may fruitfully be grounded in the daily practices of the present and not lead by architectural and technological fantasies of the metropolis of tomorrow.

• Urban computing research requires a fundamental cross disciplinary focus. A broader understanding of urban computing includes alternative perspectives and values to the discourse and to the design process.

• The understanding of urban computing and its implications must move beyond real vs virtual conceptual binaries. In daily life digital technology and “real” spaces can not be seen as separate domains.

• Urban computing belongs in the broader context of digital technology in everyday life. It should be understood in relation to both domestic practices and general network culture.

• Urban computing research should take the messiness of everyday life as its central theme. Computing and digital networks will never become the seamless and orderly utopia envisioned in traditional ubicomp research.

These conclusions set a scope within urban computing research that is narrower than the general ‘ubicomp of the city’ interpretation of the field. ‘Adventures in Urban Computing’ is not about everything from security, city maintenance, interactive architecture to sensor networks and spectacular near-future technologies. It is about designing interactions for exploring city usage within the daily practices of today and re-imagining the already mundane network devices of everyday life.

Interruptors
The second part of the diploma is a set of practical explorations that take these reflections as its starting point. These explorations investigates how mobile devices can be used to gather and provoke opinions about the city and how this can raise the awareness of daily urban environments. They focuses on how digital networks and information technologies can be used in collaborative city studies and in strategies/concepts for citizen participation.

The outcome of these studies is the Interruptor experiments. The Interruptors are urban computing prototypes that focuses on the behaviour of mobile devices in relation to the personal urban experience. The Interruptors are a result of experimental device design and fieldwork. The Interruptors are based on an analysis of the behavioral characteristics of the mobile phone. This analysis concludes that the interruptive character of the mobile phone may be an ideal initiator for observation on daily life and the city. This is not a feature of the technological platform, but of the usage of the phone. The interruption is a way for the phone to weave into the daily life.

The Interruptors is a series of devices that interrupts you and asks you to make observations. The Interruptors are networked, location-aware and are meant to be used for long periods of time in order to probe your responses everyday environments. The devices gather observations and opinions and encourage city exploration. The Interrruptor studies conclude in workshops and promotes informed discussions about urban environments. The Interruptors where developed thorough extensive fieldwork and tests and are illustrated though hypothetical case studies of collaborative city analysis and neighbourhood initiatives.

The diploma report can be downloaded here.

More pictures can be found here.

As part of my work on Touch I also made new electronic insides for Sara Johansson’s toydog Sniff. Of course the interactive exhibition prototype crashed a few hours before the opening:

We had to pull off his head to fix some connections and Sara had to re-stitch his neck. Sniff survived and all went well. More on both projects on the Touch weblog.

Yesterday I delivered the diploma. I will do a writeup when I have regenerated my mana. Thanks to all how have been helping me.

I´ve just been out taking scenario-photos of the final Interruptor (camera) prototype. The battery-life is bad and its so shiny that its difficult to take pictures of. Apart from this its an ok experience prototype. Its main function in the diploma is as concept illustration.

I´m building an “Interruptive camera” as a descriptive device. It´s just a dummy: a hacked phone inside a neat wooden shell. I hope it will help with describing some aspects of the concepts. It´s also a nice task to have lying around now that I have to write all day.

I´m in the final phase of my diploma and had the last “mycity” drawing/mapping workshop today. We mapped out nodes, routes, zones, gems, shadows, dragons and rainbows… And located the photos and notes from the interruptive notebooks. Thanks to Una, Ingeborg and Jørn.

Bowl is a simple media player that creates playful interactions with media that can be used by people of all ages, particularly young children. A simple bowl sits in front of the TV, and range of physical objects can be placed within it. When an object is placed in the bowl, related media is played back on the TV. For example a Moomin character like Little My will play a sequence from the Moomin cartoon where she is featured. Through this simple interface, Bowl encourages new, engaging and playful activities around the media experience.

Bowl is based on a long history of research into so-called ‘tangible interfaces’ for media. It takes this research and applies it to a very specific context and to a product that is ready for market, without any supporting infrastructure. Through the simple, physically-based interface, Bowl encourages a different approach to media-viewing.

There is great need for products that deal with the context of young children’s access to media. Currently there are very few products which allow access to media in a way that can be used by children aged 2-4. Existing media interfaces are overly complex, may allow access to unsuitable content, and encourage extended, unhealthy viewing habits. With traditional TV interfaces unhealthy extended viewing is encouraged through programming schedules, and unsuitable content may be accessed with only one press of a button. Bowl creates a space for physical and playful activities where screen-media is only a part of the experience.

Bowl provides a platform for users to create and adapt their own physical representations of media. It provides a way of simply linking physical objects to personal or social media like YouTube, Flickr or Facebook as well as home movies from vacations or family photos. This allows for social media to become more present and accessible in family life, instead of hidden in the PC.

Bowl has been developed through an extensive user-driven process where the product was tested and developed in-situ with young children. The interface has been refined and the content re-edited to suit the needs of the audience. The process of choosing the right kind of interactions and suitable content has resulted in a product with a seemingly simple and engaging user-experience.

Bowl has been designed as a durable product that fits within the home context. As a simple interface rather than a ‘gadget’, it doesn’t depend on changing media infrastructures, standards or platforms. We have designed it as a ‘front-end’ that can be adapted to any kind of home-media system, thus its requirements are likely to stay the same over the lifetime of it’s use, and even be adaptable to future technologies.

The paper can be downloaded here: bowl_token-based-media-for-children.pdf

The DUX presentation (with notes) can be downloaded here: bowl_martinussen_dux07_presentation.pdf

With a little help from Jørn I managed to finish the first three working probes before I left for DUX. It´s three interruptive notebooks. You turn it on when you go outdoors, put it in your pocket and it will interrupt you at random intervals. When the notebooks calls for your attention (by vibrating) you have to answere one on the questions (tasks) in the book. The books have different themes (People, Rythm and Sense) and the questions have to be answered within these contexts.  As a concept-test Una, Ingeborg and Jørn will be using the probes while I´m away and we will run a workshop as soon as I get back.